Optical micrographs show that lanthanum is heated by laser under extreme pressure. On March 4th, Russell Hemley, a materials scientist at George Washington University in Washington, told a group of researchers at the March conference in american physical society: "We think this is a new era of superconductivity." Smash tiny things between the superhard points of opposing diamonds, charts of temperature and resistance, glowing balls, and rough black "X" passing through its center. The last picture is the embodiment of the new era itself: a very small sample of super-hydrated lanthanum (or LaH 10) is squeezed into a part found in the core under similar pressure and heated to a temperature close to the cold winter in New England by laser. According to the standards of superconducting research, this is boiling heating, which is usually carried out in an extremely cold laboratory. Under these conditions, Heimli and his team found that LaH 10 no longer seemed to resist the electron movement between atoms. Obviously, as heimlich said in his APS speech, in a paper published in Physical Review Letters in June 5438 +654381October+April, it became a "room temperature superconductor" with six important elements that you have never heard of.

As early as 19 1 1 years ago, Dutch physicist Heck Kamerling Agnes found that some substances showed unusual electrical properties at extremely low temperatures.

In general, when current passes through conductive materials (such as copper wire), some strength will be lost along the way. Even the very good conductors we use in the power grid are not perfect, and it is impossible to transmit all the energy of the power station to the wall socket. Some electrons will be lost on the way.

But superconductors are different. The current introduced into the superconducting wire loop will continue to circulate without any loss. Superconductors release magnetic fields, which strongly push away magnets. They have applications in high-speed computing and other technologies. The problem is that superconductors usually work at extremely low temperatures, which makes them unsuitable for general use. For more than a century, physicists have been looking for superconductivity in materials with higher temperatures. However, finding superconductivity is a bit like amazing gold: past experience and theory may tell you where to look for superconductivity, but you won't really know where superconductivity is until you have an expensive and time-consuming inspection.

"You have so much material. Lilia Boeri, a physicist at sapienza University in Rome, said, "You have a huge space for exploration. "She published a paper after heimlich, discussing the possibility that superconductors are higher than LaH 10, and explaining why materials like this are superconducting under extreme pressure.

1986, researchers found that ceramics have superconductivity at a high temperature of 30 degrees above absolute zero or 406 degrees below zero (243 degrees below zero). Later, in the 1990s, researchers seriously studied EHV for the first time to see if new superconductors could be revealed.

But at this point, Boeri told Live Science that there is still no good way to determine whether a material is superconducting or at what temperature before testing. Therefore, the critical temperature record-the temperature at which superconductivity occurs-is kept at a very low level.

"There is a theoretical framework, but they are unable to use it," Boeri said.

The next major breakthrough was at 200 1, when researchers proved that magnesium diboride (MgB2) was superconducting at 39 degrees or 389f (-234c) above absolute zero.

[Thirty-nine degrees] is quite low, "she said," but at that time. "This is a major breakthrough because it shows that you can have superconductivity when the critical temperature is twice as high as previously thought possible.

Crushed hydrogen, since then, the search for warm superconductors has changed in two key ways: materials scientists realize that lighter elements offer attractive superconducting possibilities. At the same time, computer models have developed to the point where theorists can accurately predict the behavior of materials in extreme environments in advance.

Physicists start with the obvious.

"So, you want to use light elements, and the lightest element is hydrogen," Boeri said, but the problem is hydrogen itself-it can't be made into superconductivity because it is an insulator (a material that usually doesn't allow current to pass through). Therefore, to have a superconductor, you must first turn it into a metal. You have to do something. The best thing you can do is to squeeze it. In chemistry

Metals are almost all atoms together because they are in a free-flowing electronic soup. Most materials we call metals, such as copper or iron, are metals at room temperature and comfortable atmospheric pressure. But in more extreme circumstances, other materials may also become metals. [The most extreme laboratory in the world]

Theoretically, hydrogen is one of them. But there is a problem. "KDSP" and "KDSP" need higher pressure than the existing technology, "Hamley said in his speech." KDSP "allows researchers to look for materials containing a lot of hydrogen, which will form metals and hopefully become superconducting materials under the achievable pressure. Boeri said that theorists engaged in computer model research provided experimenters with materials that might be superconductors. And the experimenter chose the best test scheme.

However, Hemley said that the value of these models is limited. Not all predictions can be realized in the laboratory.

"People can use calculation very effectively in this work, but we need to calculate strictly and provide the final experimental test," he told the gathered crowd.

Hemley and his team's "room temperature superconductor", LaH 10, seems to be the most exciting achievement of this new research era. Between the two opposite diamond-shaped points, the LaH 10 sample is compressed to the level of1000000 times of the earth's atmospheric pressure (200 gigapascals), and becomes superconducting at a temperature of 260 degrees above absolute zero, that is, 8 degrees Fahrenheit (-13 degrees Celsius).

A picture shows the diamond anvil hole device, which is used to crush lanthanum and hydrogen together and the chemical structure they form under these pressures. ((left) APS/ Allen Stonebraker; ; (right) Another experiment described by E.Zurek in the same paper (adapted by APS/Alan Stonebraker) seems to show superconductivity of 280 degrees or 44 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius) above absolute zero. This is a cold room temperature, but it is not too difficult to reach.

At the end of his speech, Hemley suggested that in the future, this high-pressure work may lead to materials that are superconductors at warm temperatures and normal pressures. He said that maybe once a material is pressurized and the pressure is released, it may still be a superconductor. Alternatively, the lessons learned from high-temperature chemical structures may point to superconducting low-voltage structures.

Boeri said that this will change the rules of the game.

"This is basically basic research." It has no application, "she said, but suppose you come up with an effective method under pressure, such as 10 times lower than it is now. This opens the door for superconducting wires and other things.

Asked if she wanted to see superconductors under normal temperature and pressure in her lifetime, she nodded enthusiastically.

"Of course," she said.

Weird physics: the coolest particles in nature explode into civilization: 10 Amazing origin events except Higgs particles: five elusive particles that may lurk in the universe.

"Originally published in Life Science.